La Chamade (1968)
Directed by Alain Cavalier

Film Review

Catherine Deneuve stars in this touchingly ironic melodrama which is based on a novel by the celebrated French writer Françoise Sagan.  The film was directed by Alain Cavalier, one of the minor figures in the French New Wave, who worked as an assistant to the great Louis Malle.  Cavalier was more or less driven into making conventional genre films such as this when his first two films - the distinctive political thrillers Le Combat dans l'île (1962) and L'Insoumis (1964) - failed at the box office.  Whilst you do get a sense that La Chamade is not the kind of film Cavalier would have preferred to direct, it is nonetheless a thoroughly watchable piece which works both as a satire of the bourgeois classes and also as a moral tale about the ephemeral nature of love.

What is perhaps most striking about Alain Cavalier's films is the quality of the performances he manages to get out of his star actors.  For La Chamade, Catherine Deneuve is the perfect casting choice - her unworldly beauty and natural fairytale princess bearing make her the ideal actress for the part of Lucile.  Hers is an engaging, sensitive portrayal of an innocent who is seduced by her own woolly-minded idealism into taking on a life for which she is clearly not suited - a kind of fairy tale in reverse.  Whilst Deneuve's presence dominates this film, it is possible to appreciate the great contributions from her co-stars, the cool charismatic Michel Piccoli and the rather dishy Roger Van Hool. Piccoli and Deneuve had previously appeared together in Agnès Varda's Les Créatures (1966) and Luis Buñuel's Belle de jour (1967).

La Chamade 's take on that classic French theme, the love triangle, is quite surprising.  Whereas most ménage-à-trois drama are driven by the emotions of the characters involved, often towards a destructive climax, La Chamade shows an alternative in which each of the protagonists appear to accept the situation and allow the love to burn itself out.  It's a pessimistic, even cynical, view of human relationships, but in contrast to the conventional cinematic approach, it is one that is far nearer reality.  The sadness in the film's final, tacitly understated sequence is so keenly felt because it is so close to our own experiences.

Film Synopsis

Lucile enjoys a life of leisure and comfort, thanks to her rich sugar daddy, Charles.  Despite the difference in their ages - Lucile is 25, Charles is in his forties - they appear to be the perfect couple, sharing a large house, socialising with friends.  Then, one day, Lucile meets a man of her own age, Antoine, towards whom she is instantly attracted.  They hurl themselves into a passionate love affair, and Lucile soon realises that she must leaves Charles and move in with Antoine - even though the latter hasn't enough money to support both of them.  Antoine finds his lover a job, but Lucile soon realises she is not cut out for work.  Then she discovers that she is pregnant, and the painful reality of the life she has chosen suddenly hits home...